• Curiosity killed by SATs: an investigation of mathematics lessons within an English primary school

      Ward, Gavin; Quennerstedt, Mikael; Institute of Sport and Human Science, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK; School of Health Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden (Taylor & Francis, 2018-01-23)
      By taking both pupils’ and teachers’ actions as the point of departure, this study aimed to understand governance within a primary school classroom. Video footage was recorded in an English primary school in which mathematics happened to be the focus. This data was analysed to identify the directions of both governance and self-governance and to help understand the consequences for pupil and teacher subjectivities. Our findings revealed the central role of national testing and inspection policy in constituting staff as ‘evidence hunters’ and pupils as ‘confessant and unafraid producers of evidence’. Both staff and pupils were complicit in creating sufficient space for everyone to fulfil their obligation to be accountable to the school’s senior leadership team (SLT), school inspectors and national attainment tests. As a consequence, mathematical knowing was simplified into a discipline of reproducing testable calculation, in which other possibilities of mathematical knowing were foreclosed.
    • Enquiry-based learning and adult learners. A discussion

      Stevenson, Elizabeth A.; Bennett, Pete; Smith, Rob (Routledge, 2018-02-21)
    • Governmentality versus choice in contemporary special education

      Morgan, Angela (Sage Journals Online, 2005)
      This article provides an understanding of childhood welfare from a radical perspective, showing how power within the special education system affects the discourse of ‘choice’ for parents. The analysis unmasks the disciplinary power operating within the special education system and explores the manner in which such power affects choice for parents. In turn, the analysis suggests that although disciplinary power offers little sites for resistance, the actions of some parents in the exercise of choice are seen as a growing challenge to that power. It remains to be seen just how resistant the system will become in the face of such opposition.
    • Public Relations and Discourses of Professionalisation

      Williams, Sarah; Apperley, Alan (Tritonic, 2009-11-01)
    • The Good, the Bad and the Pacifier: unsettling accounts of early years practice.

      Whitmarsh, Judy (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2008)
      In this article, interviews with eight managers and questionnaires from 75 practitioners are analysed to explore their perceptions of the role of pacifiers (or dummies) within the nursery. Managers and practitioners source their knowledge from the media, family/friends, and short professional speech and language courses; however, their perceptions of pacifiers derive from mainly contested research that has filtered into the public domain. This creates tensions between perceived parental rights to offer a child a pacifier, current UK guidelines and participants' own, often ambivalent, views. The article engages with Foucauldian concepts to explore how authoritative knowledge filters into everyday practice and to deconstruct relations of power within the early years setting.